


The Abandoned Gym

by Nubushi



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Red & Green & Blue & Yellow | Pokemon Red Green Blue Yellow Versions
Genre: Drama, Gen, Kantou-chihou | Kanto Region (Pokemon), Organized Crime, Team Rocket (Pokemon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29086263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nubushi/pseuds/Nubushi
Summary: A former gym leader reflects on everything that happened since he left his gym. One-shot. Game-centric, with some anime/manga references. Written for the WA Antagonist POV challenge on FFN.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Abandoned Gym

Heavy oak doors groaned as he pushed them open. For a moment, all he could see was his own broad-shouldered shadow thrown by the light from the door behind him. When he turned pull the doors shut behind him, dust motes swarmed for a brief moment in the ray of light from outside before the heavy doors cut off the sunlight. He stepped further inside, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the shadows.

Inadvertently, his mind swarmed with images of the past, of the gym full of young trainers paired up for practice battles, which he had supervised with a watchful eye. The interior of the gym when the floor shone, and the place was full of life and energy. Now, the tiles he walked across were chipped and dusty, the air musty and oppressively hot for him in his three-piece suit.

He still knew his way without any light except the weak sunlight filtering through grime-covered windows—even though he hadn't been here since joining his team as an ordinary recruit, years ago. That was when he had given up his position as gym leader. This had been a part of his life, who he was, and now it wasn’t. He felt the corners of his mouth begin to pull back in a grimace, then instinctually schooled his features. It didn’t do for a man at the head of an organization like his to show his reactions on his face, and even here, with no one watching, the habit of keeping a poker face prevailed.

His work with them had been too easy, in a way, and at the same time, not at all.

He had infiltrated the group, and through his cunning and leadership (or, at times, just plain common sense) had knocked some order into them.

Then he set about the task of putting them to work chasing chimeras and phantoms, to keep them occupied while he did his real work. This, too, was not much of a challenge. He found a promising up-and-coming young trainer, and he sent grunts after his pikachu, which for some reason he never bothered to evolve. "There's something special about that pikachu," he told them. "Get it for me." Others, he sent on fool's errands to steal fossils and a TM for a common technique any ground pokemon could learn (as he knew, being a ground specialist). They were so gullible, and so loyal by now, they would probably even believe him if he told them they could make money selling slowpoke tails, a delicacy which had no taste and no one wanted, harvested from a pokemon that couldn't feel pain and would just grow another tail anyways. These people were clueless, to be honest.

It was comical how big and bad they thought they were, selling pokemon in the Game Corner to people who didn't have the guts or the skill to capture them wild, and would probably make them into pampered house pets. True, they raked in a killing on that, and he made sure that reflected itself in his immaculately-tailored suits and patent leather shoes. He didn't care much whether their fools' errands and wild goose chases succeeded or failed, though he made a mental note of the stories they came back with about that same young trainer with the pikachu, who had thwarted their plans. If someone was trying to get in their way, that was something he needed to be aware of; some of his objectives were more important than the ability to dig a hole.

He kept salaries deliberately low, partly because in those early days he had thought it best to discourage people with real talent. People with ambition didn’t like being stuck doing menial jobs; they would want to aim for loftier goals, which would be more likely to do some sort of real harm. People with intelligence would be able to ask the questions of why, on the one hand, their organization was content with poaching and petty theft; and on the other hand, what their boss wanted, after all, with things like the Silph Scope and the Master Ball.

It was the marowak incident which had made him reconsider whether he wasn’t keeping the level of his team members _too_ low. He frowned as he thought back on it. That incident, he regretted. He had told his grunts to _catch_ ghosts, not to _make_ them. It was an unfortunate collateral damage, and had incited him to change his course, leading to the selection of his three top admins. Maybe if he had some leaders with some basic competence, they could discipline the grunts under them not to do that sort of thing…. But the seriousness of that paled next to the fact that they hadn't even accomplished what he had set out to do.

But his target—that man had the face of a Buddha, but was as slithery as an ekans and as slippery as the slime on a poliwag's back. Was he even connected to Team Rocket in the first place? He wasn't sure, but there had to be some way to use Team Rocket to find out more about him, or at least to gather the tools to stop him—even if it meant being an accomplice to crime.

He always kept the habit, when he walked out at night to the public phone booth to contact headquarters, to keep an eye out in case he was being watched—he hadn’t succeeded undercover for this long by letting his guard down. But who was there to suspect him, to keep a watch on him? He knew where his subordinates were: playing cards, or putting coins into their own racket in the Game Corner trying to win that elusive porygon.

"Can't you try to be a little less competent?" his handler asked him over the phone, his voice desperate.

"I just need some more time."

That was always his refrain.

Because what was the consequence of a few pokemon being sold as prizes to people who will love and cherish them, compared to failing to capture a pokemon that could destroy the world, before it went on a rampage, or before someone truly evil got their hands on it? That was why he had to do no matter what it took to stop his target—the devious Mr. Fuji. Rogue scientist. Genetic modifier. Experimenter on live pokemon. Creator of monstrosities. Even now, though the old man was putting up a show of caring for sick and injured pokemon, it was no doubt either a sham or a desperate attempt to ease his guilty conscience. And even though his bungling subordinates had briefly taken Mr. Fuji hostage, they had been unable to get any useful information out of him, nothing that would make any solid evidence of his crimes.

Meanwhile, living a double life, being the Team Rocket boss and also still reporting to his police superiors, he found that working two jobs was the limit to how much he could handle. There was no time anymore for the gym he had used to run, and hadn't been for a long time, as was obvious from the building's musty air, the dust turning everything ghostly-pale.

Making his way to the back, he stood in the dim light filtering through a dust-covered window. Fishing a slim case from his suit pocket, he flipped it open and looked at his badge.

"Am I a cop or a kingpin?" he muttered to himself.

Then the doors creaked behind him.

At first, all he could see was a dark silhouette, framed by the brilliant light shining in from outside. Then the trainer stepped forward, put a gloved hand to the bill of his baseball cap to angle it up, while he thrust his chin up, proud, defiant. The determined set of his jaw and the steel of his gaze showed the certainty of someone without the shadow of a doubt in the righteousness of his cause.

Giovanni gave a low chuckle, and his shoulders shook with it. How could he not? This kid, the righteous hero who would right all of Team Rocket's wrongs, would foil all their evil plans . . . and in doing so, prevent him from doing the one crucial goal he had been working to accomplish, these years spent undercover. Not only had this trainer thwarted Team Rocket's money-making activities, but even the tools that he needed for his real plan, to capture Mewtwo--the Silph Scope, to capture a ghost pokemon capable of facing off against Mewtwo, the Master Ball he needed for Mewtwo itself--were in the hands of this kid.

Well, the kid had talent, and guts. Maybe it was time for him to pass on the baton. Not that he thought the trainer would take _his_ advice, but maybe it could be arranged for someone else to suggest capturing Mewtwo, someone the kid trusted.

"You have found me again . . . so be it!" he declared. Come what may, he wasn't going down without a fight. "This time, I'm not holding back! Once more, you shall face Giovanni, the greatest trainer!"

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written for the WA Antagonist POV challenge. This one shot is based on the fan theory that Team Rocket and Giovanni are actually good guys trying to capture Mewtwo for the sake of preventing him from going on a rampage and wreaking havoc, and the ignorant player character, not realizing this, foils their benevolent plan to save the world from a wrathful monstrosity. The idea really intrigued me, so I wanted to play with the idea of Giovanni as an undercover cop who infiltrates Team Rocket (becoming its head in the meantime because he is so much more competent than everybody else) for the aforementioned purposes.
> 
> Notes on canon:
> 
> 1\. Ash Ketchum (anime) and Red (manga/game) are really not the same person, but for the purpose of this story I deliberately conflated them (in particular, Team Rocket trying to steal Pikachu only happens in the anime).  
> 2\. "TM for a common technique any ground pokemon could learn": Dig. In the Red/Blue/Green Pokemon games, one of the things that Team Rocket attempts to do is to steal the TM (a "technical machine" that teaches a pokemon a move) "dig," so the line about being able to dig holes is also a reference to this.  
> 3\. I also referred to: a) Team Rocket's attempt to steal fossils from Mt. Moon (RBG), b) Team Rocket running the Game Corner (casino) and selling pokemon for prizes (RBG), and c) Team Rocket cutting off Slowpoke tails and selling them (Crystal/HGSS).  
> 4\. The scene at the end is where Red (from the manga or games) goes into Viridian Gym, which had been abandoned, and fights Giovanni. Come to think of it, though, I believe there were some other trainers in there in the original games, so you can consider this a straight-up reference to the manga.


End file.
